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			<h1>Speaking with Professor Shyguy about lost data</h1>
			<p>Day 00398: Friday, 2016 April 08</p>
		</header>
<p>
	On the way to work, I located that rock wall with the dismantled Geocache.
	It turned out to be one that my mother had already found years ago, but at least we don&apos;t have to look for the wall any further.
</p>
<p>
	At work, I decided to push my counting in Esperanto a bit further.
	If I could get to &quot;cent dudek&quot;, I&apos;d be past the spot where the numbers sounded too similar to lower numbers.
	I ended up making it all the way to &quot;sepcent kvindek&quot;, but then I decided to stop.
	It was starting to require too much concentration just to remember where I was.
	Work is hard enough, I don&apos;t need to be making it needlessly harder.
	I ended up instead repeatedly reciting the digits &quot;nulo&quot; through &quot;naŭ&quot;.
	I noticed that I was much more alert today than I&apos;ve been over the past couple days, no doubt because I got a bit more sleep yesterday.
	I don&apos;t have that luxury today though, so I&apos;ll probably be tired again at work tomorrow.
	I&apos;ve also noticed that since the first time I woke up after my first shift, I&apos;ve had a kink in my back that won&apos;t go away.
	Hopefully that&apos;ll work itself out soon.
</p>
<p>
	On my break, I started messing around with the vending machine in the break room.
	You can insert one-dollar bills into it, then tell it that you changed your mind, at which point it&apos;ll spit out four quarters.
	It doesn&apos;t take other bill denominations though.
	I&apos;m going to bring a bunch of stamped one-dollar bills tomorrow just to put them into circulation.
</p>
<p>
	One of my coworkers knows about the net neutrality issue! It feels like there are too few people that even know what&apos;s going on, let alone care about it.
	If net neutrality is taken away, I think a lot of people are going to learn the truth real quickly and start making a fuss, but by then, it&apos;ll be too late.
	My coworker also seems to be aware of Bitcoin (he brought it up, not me), though he doesn&apos;t actually use it.
	At some point, I should probably figure out what I need to do to start using Bitcoin, but it&apos;ll be a pain because of the huge block chain.
	The problem&apos;s only going to get worse as time goes on.
</p>
<p>
	My boss mentioned that the sapling protectors can be a bit rough on one&apos;s hands, so I said that I&apos;d been thinking about getting some gloves because of that.
	He said that I&apos;d probably want fingerless gloves so that I&apos;d still be able to grip the protectors, though I fear that fingerless gloves won&apos;t be protective enough.
	The tips of my pinkies are a couple of the focal points of the damage.
	A bit later, he brought me a pair of gloves to borrow! They weren&apos;t fingerless, so they offered pretty good protection, but he was right.
	Despite the fact that the gloves were covered in grip-aiding bumps, I couldn&apos;t grip the protectors as well, so they slowed me down.
</p>
<p>
	We finished working with the sapling protectors of the size we started with and moved on to making some taller ones.
	Apparently, people sometimes order them as tall as one and a half meters feet, those these ones weren&apos;t that tall.
	I&apos;m not sure what kind of tree is still thin enough to need protection from deer by the time it gets to a height of one and a half meters though.
	I love that I live in an area where someone would even order this many sapling protectors.
	The area just supports plant life so well! If you step outside and look around, you can see hundreds of trees without even searching.
</p>
<p>
	The extruder was running at a set speed, so when the cutter&apos;s settings were changed to allow bigger sapling protectors, less of them came out.
	I wasn&apos;t needed on that machine any more, as less people were required at the slower pace.
	Instead, I started working with the other extruders and cutters.
	I ran both of the bag machines and the machine that produced the long, strange tubes from yesterday.
	It was pretty easy work, I could sort of relax while doing it.
	The strange tube machine only kicked out a tube every once in a while, and it wasn&apos;t urgent that the tubes be handled, so I could ignore it when something more pressing was going on.
	One bag machine always stopped when it had a full set of bags, so it needed to be kept under watch, so that the bags could be taken, the machine restarted, then the bags wrapped up.
	Otherwise, the machine would not be running as much as it could be.
	The other bag machine endlessly spat out bags, keeping a count as it did so.
	I also had to keep an eye on that machine to grab the bags when it had a set of one hundred ready, because otherwise, two sets of bags would end up mixed together and I&apos;d need to count them by hand to separate them back out.
	When there was time between bag sets, and there always was, I&apos;d go grab the strange tubes, make note of their number, and put them in a box for later.
	Other than that, all that I needed to do was box the bags and prepare them for shipping.
	The one part that I didn&apos;t like was that I kept strangely becoming unaware of the bag cutter&apos;s rhythmic sounds.
	My mind was blocking it out as background noise, probably.
	A bit later, I&apos;d be startled by the fact that I couldn&apos;t hear it, jump a little and look at the bag machine, then begin hearing it again.
</p>
<p>
	The boss offered me a ride to Pony Village Mall.
	He said that he was already heading there, and it&apos;s would save me a lot of walking to get home, so I accepted.
	He ended up wanting to take me all the way home though, which was both inconvenient and counterproductive.
	He wasn&apos;t stopping at my home if not giving me a lift, which means that extra fossil fuels were burned.
	I would have declined his offer if I&apos;d known that he was going to do that.
	I couldn&apos;t exactly refuse to tell him where I live though, which would have prevented it, as then it looks like I&apos;m hiding from him.
	In addition to the wasted fuel, I actually had business at the Pony Village Mall anyway.
	I was going to deposit all my money and withdraw one-dollar bills, so to do that, I ended up walking in both directions.
	I won&apos;t complain about that part though, as if he&apos;d not given me a lift at all, the walk would have taken hours to complete.
	I kind of wonder if he was even really headed to the mall at all though, to be honest.
	The whole trip might have been for me, which would suck.
	As he was leaving, he said that he was going &quot;to the mall or something&quot;, and if he had already planned to come this way, he&apos;d have known for sure where he was going.
</p>
<p>
	After getting my money changed, I picked up some hash brown patties at the local grocery store.
	Their potato-based goodness should make it easier to stay energized at work.
	I had been eating sandwiches at work, but peanut butter and jam that expired over a year ago aren&apos;t the most energizing foods.
</p>
<p>
	When I got home, I found that my modem was down.
	Again.
	It seems that it was down for two hours before I caught it, yet <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> hadn&apos;t failed yet.
	I wonder what causes <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> to try to restart.
	It&apos;s the restart attempts that trigger the problem, so as long as <abbr title="The Onion Router">Tor</abbr> continues running without restarting, it should be able to stay up without an Internet connection indefinitely.
</p>
<p>
	While building an inventory list of what was and was not on the <a href="https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com./merch/32gb-usb-30-drive-fragmentation-version">Professor Shyguy <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive</a>, I found that <a href="https://professorshyguy.bandcamp.com./album/fragmentation">Fragmentation</a> now has a bonus track, but only if you order a physical copy.
	This will be the third time that I&apos;ve purchased this album ...
	In any case, I&apos;ve been wanting to make a new music purchase now that I&apos;m actually employed.
	More than that, I&apos;m hoping that by sending more money Shyguy&apos;s way, he&apos;ll be less likely to think that I&apos;m trying to take advantage of him by trying to get as much as I can out of him without paying him what I owe.
	It&apos;s doubtful that he&apos;d think that, but I&apos;m a bit paranoid about these kinds of things.
	In all honesty, I don&apos;t care too much about missing tracks that can be bought separately online, as I&apos;d like to eventually add them to my online collection anyway.
	However, I fear that <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive-only tracks may be missing.
	If that&apos;s the case, I&apos;d never know if the tracks were missing.
	After building the inventory list, I happened to find one of my old <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drives that I could test on, so I formatted it and gave it an ext4 file system.
	As expected, the drive didn&apos;t corrupt its file system or lose files that were put on it.
	Something is undoubtedly wrong with the Professor Shyguy <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive, not my machine.
	Finally, I wrote the following letter to Professor Shyguy:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Greetings Professor Shyguy!
</p>
<p>
	When I received the USB drive that you sent me back in December, I noticed that some of your music wasn&apos;t on it.
	At the time, I wrote it off as not being a big deal.
	However, on Monday, I tried writing more files to the drive for the first time, which caused the USB drive to exhibit strange behavior and eventually data loss.
	Putting two and two together, I suspect that the USB drive was damaged in the mail and some of the music files may have been lost before I was able to copy them to my hard drive.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;m not trying to get you to send another USB drive, but can you please look over this summary of the files I got from it to see if that&apos;s all that was supposed to be on the drive? Thank you very much and thank you for all the great music that you write!
</p>
<p>
	On USB drive:<br/>
Fragmentation [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
Geekotica [lossless (ten are FLAC, one is WAV)]<br/>
Rated Heart [lossless (twelve are FLAC, one is WAV)]<br/>
Rhythm &amp; Bloops [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
History 1-1 [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
80s Ep (MAGProm) [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
Happy Parallel [MP3 only]<br/>
The Instrumentals [twenty-three lossless (FLAC), six missing]<br/>
Unplugged: Please Check Connection [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
Triforce Tour - Triforce Collected [three MP3 only, seven tracks missing]<br/>
Merry Chipmas [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
LoL Troll [MP3 only]<br/>
Still Alive (Cover) [MP3 only]<br/>
Rated Heart [lossless (twelve FLAC, one WAV)]
</p>
<p>
	Not on USB drive:<br/>
Happy Parallel [lossless missing, MP3 present]<br/>
The Instrumentals [six tracks missing]<br/>
Triforce Tour - Triforce Collected [three missing lossless, seven missing entirely]<br/>
Diamond Club Movie Draft 2014 [missing]<br/>
LoL Troll [lossless missing, MP3 present]<br/>
Still Alive (Cover) [lossless missing, MP3 present]<br/>
Ruston Family Christmas [missing]
</p>
<p>
	USB drive-only (not available online, unknown completeness):<br/>
Pull Paradox (Bonus Track) [MP3 only]<br/>
Helix Prophecy [lossless (WAV)]<br/>
The White Lie Album [five tracks, MP3 only]<br/>
Another One Bytes the Dust (Short) [MP3 only]<br/>
Star Stuff (Demo) [MP3 only]
</p>
<p>
	~ Yst Dawson
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	It&apos;s worth noting that some of the albums listed above are nonfree and shouldn&apos;t be listened to.
	I included them in the email only to insure that the summary of files would be complete so that there&apos;d be as little chance of miscommunication as possible.
	Rather than check the list as I&apos;d asked, he instead offered to potentially send me a me <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive!:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	Is it possible to format the drive or has it gone completely wonky?  I&apos;ve
got a new set of drives that have been less temperamental and I can
possibly replace that one.
</p>
<p>
	- Brandt
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	Under normal circumstances, offering to replace the drive would be the correct thing to do.
	His new drives are &quot;less temperamental&quot;, suggesting that he got a bad batch and was shipping a defective batch of <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drives, which he probably didn&apos;t find out until later.However, I&apos;d be happy with just the files.
	If he does end up sending a new <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive, it&apos;ll feel like he&apos;s going above and beyond he should do, though I know that that doesn&apos;t make any sense.
	Anyway, I replied about having already tried formatting the drive and what happens when I do that:
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>
	I&apos;ve tried formatting it upwards of twenty times in the past few days (including once today before writing to you).
	If I format it as ext4 (or anything that isn&apos;t FAT32), the file system becomes corrupt upon ejecting the device.
	If I format it as FAT32, the file system doesn&apos;t become corrupt, but files will disappear while still taking up space on the drive (so the drive will look like it contains maybe five files, but the space of ten files is used up).
	Deleting the visible files shows that the space really is used up, it&apos;s not that I don&apos;t realize the size of the files.
	At one point, the drive appeared to be 73% full, but it had zero accessible files.
</p>
<p>
	Ha ha, I&apos;m sorry to be troublesome like this.
	But I take it that some of the other drives have gotten strange as well? I&apos;m glad to hear that it&apos;s not just me.
</p>
<p>
	~ Yst
</p>
</blockquote>
<p>
	It&apos;s occurred to me that each of my three copies of Fragmentation has come with a different set of extras that&apos;s exclusive to that format.
	The first one was a pre-order, which came with unfinished versions of the songs that could only be downloaded for a limited time.
	Despite having paid for it, I can&apos;t download these again later.
	The second was the <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive, which came with a few tracks that were considered to be &quot;odds and ends&quot;.
	Finally, this <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> comes with a bonus track that was written for the album, but not considered to be a good enough fit to make a part of the main album.
	It&apos;s a bit strange having three copies of the album on my purchases page though, especially seeing as the downloads offered from there don&apos;t contain the bonuses, and are therefore identical.
	Professor Shyguy says that he&apos;ll refund shipping on orders for the <abbr title="compact disc">CD</abbr> by people that already ordered a digital version, but I&apos;m not going to try to push for that.
	I&apos;m already maybe getting a new <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive from him, which has to cost him something.
	I&apos;m hoping that he&apos;s able to get a refund himself for the screwy <abbr title="Universal Serial Bus">USB</abbr> drive itself, as he didn&apos;t make those, he only put them inside a Game Boy game&apos;s shell.
	Still, he&apos;s got to pay for the Game Boy games that he dismantles and shipping of the drive, and his time itself to build them is worth something.
</p>
<p>
	Just in time to catch the mail man, I filled out the questionnaire that the jury summons people sent and attached my note to it.
	I ended up omitting the second paragraph though, the rant about offering a non-telephone way of doing things.
	I&apos;m trying to get out of jury duty due to the commute to it being too far.
	I don&apos;t need to go needlessly raising any red flags that might make people question the legitimacy of my request.
	However, that doesn&apos;t mean that I&apos;m going to imply that I have telephone service.
	The form asked for both a daytime telephone number and an evening telephone number, so in both fields, I wrote &quot;no telephone service, use email&quot; and wrote my email address on the bottom.
	I was going to write it in angle-bracketed <abbr title="Uniform Resource Identifier">URI</abbr> form, but again, I don&apos;t need any mistakes.
	People might try to use the brackets as part of the email address or think that <code>mailto:</code> is a suspicious thing to have as part of an email address.
	I&apos;m already using an email domain that many people don&apos;t recognize, while at the same time trying to get out of jury duty and not providing a telephone number.
	I have to at least try to make my response look as legitimate as it actually is.
	I finished with the questionnaire just in time to meet the mail man as he came by my house for deliveries, so I handed it to him and asked if he&apos;d take it to the post office for me.
	Of course he would, it&apos;s part of his job, but it&apos;s polite to ask.
</p>
<p>
	I tried to fix my flat tires next, but that didn&apos;t go well.
	In order to get the old inner tubes off and the new ones on, the wheels needed to be removed as usual.
	Normally, that&apos;s no problem, but one of the nuts on one of the wheels refuses to come off.
	The usual tool that I use for it has also become corroded by the same wrenched humid air that causes everything here to rot so quickly.
	This tool, made of an unknown metal, broke off in my bare hands! It had become too weak to withstand the combined strength of the unbudging bolt and my arm.
	The wrenches that I could find are all the wrong size, with &quot;5/16&quot; being too small and &quot;3/8&quot; being too large.
	I need an &quot;11/32&quot; or something, and I&apos;m not sure where to get that, or a replacement for the tool that I usually use.
	It looks like I won&apos;t be using the bicycle for a while.
	I did locate my old lock and chain, but that won&apos;t do me any good yet.
</p>
<p>
	I&apos;ve decided to start taking my laptop to work to type on during my lunch break.
	I have nothing better to do during this time and it&apos;d save me some time later.
	I can begin writing my weblog entries from work, then finish later at home.
</p>
<p>
	Tomorrow might be a bit bad.
	I didn&apos;t have time to finish everything that I wanted to get done today, but I got done enough that there isn&apos;t time for a full night of sleep.
	I&apos;d love to get more done, but I&apos;d better not push it.
</p>
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